Pete Behrens is currently hosting a survey of the tools used to help with managing various aspects of an agile process. It only takes a minute to complete, and the closing date is October 31st. Do it now.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Steve Eichert reminds us that even agile planning can sometimes blind us to the need to produce working software.

Emmanuel Gaillot exhorts us to borrow the first 5 minutes, and thereby begin the process of paying off a project’s technical debt.

Pascal van Cauwenberghe and Rob Westgeest ran their Bottleneck session at AgileNorth 2006, with one neat twist that helped us map the value streams in our real-life scenarios. “Retroscending” is well worth a try!

And as if one neologism wasn’t enough, Eric Gunnerson introduces the new agile methodology called Scrumbut – as in “we’re doing Scrum, but…”

Spotlight
Allow me to introduce you to Pascal van Cauwenberghe, from Belgium. In addition to his day job as an agile consultant, Pascal is one of the organisers of XP Day Benelux, and is a keen student of Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking and the Theory of Constraints. He thinks deeply about software development and works hard at helping others to learn. I recommend you subscribe to his blog today.

Previous Editions
All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website. Future editions will be published on the first and third Thursday of each month.

Join in the Fun!
A big thank-you to all those who sent in suggestions for this edition of the carnival – please keep ’em coming. If you have something that you think is worth sharing – especially from a blog we haven’t featured before, send us a link by emailing agilists.carnival@gmail.com, or use the carnival submission form.